Thinking About Guns

I own a pistol. In my younger days I enjoyed wandering through woods and shooting at various inanimate objects I encountered: bottles, cans, fruit – anything that looked like it might explode if struck by a bullet. I would place the doomed object on a fencepost and step back a reasonable distance so I could test my aim. I never shot at mailboxes or road signs. As for shooting at paper targets – where’s the fun? I’ve never seen a sheet of paper explode from a bullet.

I never hunted. I never had a desire to kill. I acknowledge that many men do enjoy killing. It’s in our human DNA. For thousands of years our ancestors killed to survive. Killing to survive became wired in our brains. A successful hunt meant we wouldn’t starve that day. Our survival no longer depends on hiking through woods to obtain a dead animal. But the hunt and the kill still stimulates that ancient reward circuit in some people’s brains.

I haven’t fired my gun in years, but I keep bullets in the magazine, and I keep it where I can get to it fast. I tell myself that in the unlikely event of a home invasion, I’ll have a chance. But I would gladly give that gun to the authorities if it would bring back one child or teacher from any “Sandy Hook”-type massacre. And knowing that, I feel compelled to make a distinction between gun owners and gun zealots.

Gun zealots worship the concept of “no limits to gun ownership” as if it were God’s 11th commandment. Why? And why with guns but not other technologies that are less dangerous than guns?

For example, we could amend the Constitution to give everyone the right to drive. We’ll abolish drivers’ exams: no written test, no eye test, no driving test, no license. Everyone can drive, no matter what, because it’s in the Constitution. Do you suppose the roads would be safer? Would you feel safer knowing the road you are on is filled with untested, unlicensed drivers of all ages and physical and mental conditions?

Didn’t think so.

That is why every state requires would-be drivers to demonstrate a certain competence at driving. They must show they can read road signs. They must show they understand the rules of the road.

And yet, I haven’t heard anyone claim that licensing drivers is a step down a slippery slope that will lead to the government confiscating everyone’s cars.

The federal government requires would-be pilots to attend ground school, undergo flight training, fly a minimum number of hours, and demonstrate their proficiency to a pilot examiner before they are licensed to fly and carry passengers. Imagine the mayhem if anyone of any age and physical or mental condition was allowed to fly any airplane at any time with no experience and no training.

And yet, I haven’t heard anyone claim that licensing pilots is the first step toward the government confiscating all general aviation aircraft.

Our military trains its soldiers how to carry a gun, how to handle a gun, how to shoot a gun, how to know what gun is appropriate for a given situation. But I, and you, and the crazy tin-foil-hat guy who lives down the street, can walk into a gun show and walk out with an armful of very lethal weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo, and none of us have to demonstrate any knowledge of guns whatsoever. Nor do we have to prove we’re not serial killers or dangerous mental patients. Private sellers at gun shows don’t care. It’s all about the Benjamins.

Before the Civil War, millions of people considered slavery an institution approved of by no less than God Himself. Preachers in southern pulpits told their congregations that slavery was Biblical, and that God had ordained that black people in America were supposed to be slaves. Most white southerners fervently believed in the institution of slavery.

Gun zealots have a slogan: “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” Make no mistake, slave owners felt the very same way about their slaves. It took a war to end slavery. Between 620,000 and 850,000 Americans died in a land that counted only 31 million citizens. That was the cost of prying slavery from their cold, dead fingers.

The zealotry I see today among gun fanatics leads me to compare the struggle to enact sensible gun regulation to the struggle to end slavery. Gun zealots intend to go down swinging. But the irony is that no one wants to confiscate their guns. No one wants to end their right to buy and own firearms. No (or at least, very few) people advocate repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

If you like to hunt, or shoot at paper targets, or if you want a gun for self defense, fine – buy a gun. Some of us would just like to know you’re not a dangerous felon or criminally insane person before you walk out the door with your gun. And if you want to buy a military-grade weapon that was designed to inflict as much carnage as quickly as possible, I think we might want to put that sale on hold for a while – just as we would do if you were trying to buy a bazooka.

Lest you’ve forgotten, or perhaps never knew, 3000 kids are killed every year by guns and another 14,000 are injured by guns.

I used to go to a certain restaurant once or twice every week. One day, a waitress I knew was there with her little boy. He looked to be about six years old. One of his hands and half of his forearm were missing. I asked someone who worked there how he lost half his arm. She told me that this waitress – the boy’s mother – had an argument with her boyfriend (or maybe he was her husband – I’ve forgotten the details). During the argument, the man got out his gun and started waving it around, threatening to shoot someone or something. The boy’s mother and the man fought over the gun and the gun discharged. The bullet went through the wall and into the boy’s bedroom where it struck his arm. The injury was so severe that doctors had to amputate the arm.

That’s just one of the 14,000 child gun injuries this year that you won’t see on CNN. Nor will you see most, if any, of the 3000 children guns will kill this year.

Since 1963, nearly 193,000 children and teens have been killed with guns on American soil—more than four times the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined. Something here is not right.

The Welfare of Animals

In 2007, animal rights groups in the US were able to end funding for USDA inspection of horse meat. That made it illegal for US slaughterhouses to sell horse meat for human consumption. All horse slaughter plants in the US closed. However, horses were then exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. Horse slaughter is definitely not done in a humane manner.

After nearly completely wiping out the gray wolf from the lower 48 states, and after a great deal of effort to re-introduce them into their habitat, hunters may once again legally kill wolves. Ranchers called the wolves a nuisance.

Dog-fighting is an illegal but still popular form of animal abuse in many parts of the U.S., both rural and urban.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

My mother used to put it this way: “Children and animals have a hard time in this world."

Thinking About The Universe

Sometimes I think about the Universe. It’s hard for me to conceive of the Universe having a beginning, but it did. There was a time when our Universe and its trillions of galaxies did not exist. Then suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, it sprang into existence. That happened 13.8 billion years ago. We call that event the Big Bang.

We think of space as “empty space”. Of course, space contains galaxies and dust and radiation, but if you take all of that away, what’s left? Empty space. Except, space is something. Meaning, space is not nothing. It is definitely something.

When we point our telescopes at other galaxies, we can see that they are moving away from us. The farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it is traveling away from us. But this doesn’t mean there is something special about our place in the Universe. The fact is, this truth holds for every galaxy. If you could travel to any place in the Universe, you would see all the other parts of the Universe moving away from you.

You might think all these galaxies have some outward velocity, that they’re traveling though space like pieces of shrapnel traveling outward from a bomb, and it’s just a coincidence that each galaxy happens to have a speed and direction that results in its moving away from every other galaxy. But you would be wrong.

What is actually happening is this: the space between galaxies is expanding. Space itself is expanding. Galaxies are embedded in space, and as space expands it carries the galaxies away from each other. It’s like a loaf of raisin bread in the oven. As the loaf rises and expands, the raisins move away from each other. They’re not traveling through the loaf of bread. They’re staying put; it’s the loaf that is expanding and carrying the raisins farther apart.

If space were literally and truly nothing, how could it expand?

Our Universe, apart from the matter and energy it contains, is made of something we call spacetime. Space and time are the components of spacetime. That is why an object’s velocity through space affects the passage of time for that object. Space and time are woven together. If you tug on one you affect both.

The Big Bang created the Universe. But the Big Bang wasn’t something that happened somewhere in space. Before the Big Bang happened, space didn’t exist. The Big Bang created space. And it created Time. It created spacetime.

Suppose you had the power to remove everything from the Universe. You remove the stars, you remove the dust and gas, you remove light and x-rays and gamma-rays. You remove everything, until finally there is nothing left but a Universe of empty space. And finally, you remove the empty space. Now, what do you have?

You have the situation that existed before the Big Bang. I call it the Void. The Void can’t be pure nothingness, because if nothing at all existed – not matter, not space, not energy, not potential energy, not even some kind of mathematical framework to hang the laws of physics on – if nothing at all existed, then there would be nothing to cause the Big Bang.

If we had a time machine, we could travel back 13.8 billion years to a time when there was no Universe. We’d have to be in a very special time machine that could exist without occupying any space at all, because there was no space to occupy then. There would be no up or down or this way or that way, because those terms describe 3 dimensional space, of which there wasn’t any. Yet. But something happened. We don’t know how it happened, but we see the flotsam and jetsam it left behind. We see stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, black holes, neutron stars, magnetars, blazars, quasars, and other wonders. We see trillions of galaxies. We see a Universe that might be infinite. In fact, there may very well be an infinite number of Universes, each sealed off from all the others, each a part of a vaster Multiverse.

Physicists have theories about how the Universe began and how it may end. In fact, with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, physicists tell us the Universe is unstable and could collapse into an alternate reality at any time – a reality in which we won’t exist!

I try not to think too much about these things. They’re way above my “pay grade.” But for those who are interested, there are many videos on YouTube that discuss the Universe and how it might end. PBS Space Time is a good place to begin.

The Twenty Year War

I watch the news, like everyone else. What's been happening in Afghanistan this week is commonly called a "shit-show." Trump made a deal with the Taliban, but I think all that he accomplished was to give the Taliban advance notice and the time to prepare for a takeover. When Biden took over the presidency, he paused the plan in order for his people to have time to examine and understand the plan, and then he went ahead with it. I really don't know if the shit-show part of our exit could have been avoided. 

In the 20 years since September 11, 2001, the United States has spent $2.26 trillion on the war in Afghanistan. That's $300 million dollars per day, every day, for two decades. Or $50,000 for each of Afghanistan's 40 million people. We provided them with good weapons. We trained their military. But when the U.S. Army left the country and the pooh hit the punka-wallah, the Afghan army folded like a triptych. I really doubt that it could have ended any other way. 

When I say "we spent" more than $2 trillion on the war, I don't mean to imply that we paid for the war. No, we just put the $2 trillion on our credit card, a.k.a. the National Debt, where it will stay for decades. The debt will grow each year as it accrues interest, until one day there will come a day of reckoning. We probably haven't paid for the Vietnam war yet. The cost of that war is probably hiding in the $27.8 trillion in debt that America owes as of this date. 

Here are some more numbers from the Watson Institute at Brown University:

The Human Cost:

• American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.
• U.S. contractors: 3,846.
• Afghan national military and police: 66,000.
• Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.
• Afghan civilians: 47,245.
• Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.
• Aid workers: 444.
• Journalists: 72.

Afghanistan After Nearly 20 Years of U.S. Occupation:

• Percentage drop in infant mortality rate since U.S., Afghan and other allied forces overthrew the Taliban government: About 50.
• Percentage of Afghan teenage girls able to read today: 37.

America Used To Pay For Wars With Cash.

• Amount President Harry Truman temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Korean War: 92%.
• Amount President Lyndon Johnson temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Vietnam War: 77%.

But then:

• Amount President George W. Bush cut tax rates for the wealthiest, rather than raise them, at outset of Afghanistan and Iraq wars: At least 8%.
• Estimated Iraq war interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.
  
• Estimated amount the United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion.

Lessons learned? We're leaving Afghanistan, but the bills will continue coming in for a very long time. We seem to have learned no lessons from the Vietnam War. I wonder if Afghanistan will teach our future leaders anything.

An Early Morning Surprise

My phone alerted me to an incoming WhatsApp call. The time was 4AM. In darkness, I reached for my phone. It was a video call. I poked the answer icon, and Nuria appeared. She was well dressed and her surroundings were not familiar to me. 

"Where are you?" I asked.

"I'm in Dallas, at the airport. I'll be in Richmond at 11AM."

At first, my brain could not compute what she was saying. Nuria lives in Costa Rica, a country in Central America. But now she's in Dallas? She's going to be in Richmond at 11AM? What is happening?

She explained that she is coming here to be with me on my birthday, which is later this month. Also, she just wanted to visit me. It is a long trip from San Jose, CR, to Richmond, VA. It began at 3:38PM yesterday (CR time) at San Jose Juan Santamaria airport in Costa Rica, and now she's at Dallas Fort Worth airport in Texas, and at 11AM she'll arrive at Richmond International Airport in Virginia. I'll be there to meet her and drive us to my city. She'll spend a month in America, land of the What-a Burger (which we both love), land of the Texas Steakhouse and the Longhorn Restaurant. And let's not overlook Olive Garden. My small city is the land of restaurants. Here, you can buy any kind of food that floats your boat. Lots of Chinese, Mexican, and Japanese restaurants, too ... lots of steakhouses, lots of fast food. And did I mention, we have the world's largest Arby's. And next door in Petersburg, there is the world's best BBQ restaurant. There was a BBQ restaurant on Brambleton Avenue in Roanoke, VA, that ran a very close second place, and maybe even could have won the first place ribbon for its ribs, but now that place is gone—closed for good.

The sun hasn't risen but it's getting light outside, and I have a few things to do before I leave the house. So I'll cut this short and post again when I can. Be good, y'all.

The World We Made

It is 6:45 AM. The temperature outside is 72°F. The high temperature will be 97° today, and the "feel-like" temperature will be 110°. That's August in central Virginia. The hottest days have not arrived yet. On the hottest days, the actual temperature will be above 100°. 

Here (image left) is an example of a hot day in Virginia. The air temperature is 108° and the heat index (misery index, I call it) is 111°. The humidity is low, only 23%, so the heat index isn't much higher than the real temperature. The humidity today is forecast to be 62%. 

I don't think I've seen any June bugs this summer. When I was young, I would see a lot of them every summer. But they've almost vanished, just like many species. Butterflies used to be plentiful. Now I rarely see one. Probably the flowers they depend on for food (nectar) are vanishing, as people don't plant them as much today and the wild places where they used to grow have been paved over for houses and shopping centers. So there is a collapse in Nature's web, as the small creatures vanish, most never to return. We will leave a very different world to our next generation than the world that we inherited. Those next generations will never know the beauty and diversity that has been lost, except through photographs. "This is how it used to be ... this is how it used to look." I'm sure today's people feel that they have replaced what they've lost with more interesting things, like cellphones and comic-book action movies. They're wrong, of course, but they'll never know it.

What will today's world look like in fifty years? Sixty years? Seventy years? Will there even be a world fit to live in? Will there be a world that you and I would want to live in? Will all the animals be in zoos, and will all the butterflies be in photos? My friend Nuria in Costa Rica has a sister who feeds hummingbirds in her back yard. Will there be hummingbirds in fifty years? Will people even care? 

Sometimes I think humanity may have taken a wrong turn, may have gone down a bad road. Sometimes I hope I'm wrong. Sometimes I think it doesn't matter. Everything balances in the end.

There is a video about a Hopi (Native American) prophecy. I like it, and maybe it will mean something to you. It's beautiful, if nothing else. I'm embedding it below, but you can watch it full screen if you click on the box in the bottom right corner of the video player.

LIfe Before Liberty

America's Declaration of Independence asserts:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Note that Life comes before Liberty. Life is more fundamental than Liberty. You cannot have Liberty if you do not have Life.

The Declaration of Independence further asserts that this "new Government" must lay its foundation and organize its powers "in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

So Life comes before Liberty, and now we see that Safety comes before Happiness.

America's Constitution begins with this sentence:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Again we see that the purpose of government is to defend the citizens and to promote the "general Welfare."

At those times when we are under attack, the purpose of government is to defend us. At all times, the purpose of government is to promote the general Welfare of the people.

What is the "general Welfare"? What does that mean?

Congress has said, "Historically, the 'general Welfare' has meant improving transportation, promoting agriculture and industry, protecting health and the environment, and seeking ways to solve social and economic problems."

Note that one of the ways to promote the general welfare is by "protecting health."

In other words, the founding documents of the United States of America charge Congress with the responsibility to defend citizens and to promote the general welfare by performing certain responsibilities, among which is the task of protecting the health of our citizens.

There are many people on the "far right" today who would have you believe that those protections that can prevent the transmission of a deadly virus are taking away our Liberty, our right to choose what to do. 

In reality, and according to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, mandating masks and vaccines is exactly what Congress is supposed to be doing now. That advice is coming from doctors and medical scientists and organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control. Members of Congress are not expected to be endowed with medical knowledge, but it is reasonable to expect Congress to consult medical experts and use their knowledge to "protect health," to "promote the general Welfare," and to ensure that we citizens have Life, so that we may then enjoy Liberty and thereby have the freedom to pursue Happiness.

Congress needs to do its job, which is to implement the rules that medical science is telling us are necessary to protect us and promote the "general Welfare." Many Americans are dying because Congress has failed to perform its Constitutional responsibility.

Spanish

As regular readers of this blog may know, I've been studying Spanish since November 9, 2020. I really began studying it before that, but I've been studying every day since that date. I use Duolingo and I have a 228 day streak going. That is to say, I've studied Spanish for a few hours every day for the last 228 consecutive days. Yay!

I have a Spanish tutor, which is good because learning a language is difficult. At least, it is for me. First, there are all those words to learn! And then verb conjugations and verb tenses. In Spanish (and often in English, too) a verb changes depending on the person speaking. In English, the word "Go" is easy to conjugate. I go, I went, I am going, I have gone, I will go, I will have gone, I was going, I had gone, I will be going, I have been going, I had been going, I will have been going, That is twelve tenses. English has twelve tenses and Spanish has fourteen tenses. But the example I just gave is only for the first person point of view. There are other points of view. In Spanish the points of view are: I, you (informal), he/she, we, you (formal), they and you (plural).

One of the "fun" verbs to conjugate in English is "to have," with conjugations like "I had," "I have had," "I had had," I have been having", "I will have been having," "I had been having," etc. Spanish is no different. There are points of view for each verb, and there are different tenses. But my Spanish tutor is always ready to help me.

An aside:

I should mention that my Costa Rican friend's name is Nuria, so I won't have to keep calling her "my Spanish tutor." I'll just call her Nuria. Here's an interesting factoid: in Costa Rica, people have four names. They have a first (given) name, and a second (middle) name, just as we in America have. Then they have a third name, which is their father's last name, and a fourth name, which is their mother's last name. When a woman gets married, her name does not change. She does not adopt any part of her husband's name.

Nuria was married in America, so her U.S. marriage certificate shows her last name as her husband's last name. But in Costa Rica, her full, legal name is the name on her birth certificate. Her husband was (he is deceased now) an American and she lived and worked in America, so she has a Social Security card with her husband's last name, and she has a passport with her own last names (birth names), so working with government agencies in the two countries always carries the possibility of confusion or misunderstanding.

But I'm off topic. I was talking about the difficulty of memorizing tenses in another language. Some verbs are rather easy to learn. But then there are the "exceptions."  For example, let's use the verb "to go" which in Spanish is "ir."

Here is the present tense:

yo voy	I go
tú vas	You (informal) go
él/ella/ello/uno va	He/she/one goes
usted va	You (formal) go
nosotros vamos	We go
vosotros váis	You all (informal) go
ellos/ellas van	They go
ustedes van	You all (formal) go

But wait, that's just the present tense. There are thirteen more tenses to learn. Here's the preterite tense:

yo fui	I went
tú fuiste	You (informal) went
él/ella/ello/uno fue	He/she/one went
usted fue	You (formal) went
nosotros fuimos	We went
vosotros fuisteis	You all (informal) went
ellos/ellas fueron	They went
ustedes fueron	You all (formal) went

 Two tenses down and twelve to go. Here's the future tense:

yo iré	I will go
tú irás	You (informal) will go
él/ella/ello/uno irá	He/she/one will go
usted irá	You (formal) will go
nosotros iremos	We will go
vosotros iréis	You all (informal) will go
ellos/ellas irán	They will go
ustedes irán	You all (formal) will go

Okay. Enough of that. You have the idea. So I'm doing this Spanish thing every day, usually two to four hours per day. The only thing I'm learning is that I'm easily confused. But it keeps me off the streets and out of trouble. And I'm writing this blog when I get time, which is why I began writing at 4:30 AM today. 

Another aside: Nuria used to work at an optical shop. The man she worked for, the owner of the shop (and a good boss, at least to her), just died. He had Covid and was hospitalized for three or four days before he died. He was 38 or 39 years old with a wife and two young children. There is Covid vaccine in Costa Rica, but his religion (Jehovah's Witnesses) forbids vaccinations. Just like far-right groups in the U.S., including some members of the GOP, these groups are killing off their own members by giving them bad advice. Yet at the end, each one of us is responsible for our own health and our own life.

Covid Upside

Daily Covid-19 cases in the USA:

 

Daily Covid-19 deaths in the USA:

  

Look at all the Covid cases in the USA! Look at all the deaths! And most of those deaths were entirely preventable. But you can't tell vaccine deniers that they're making a terrible mistake. They won't believe you. So I'm not going to try to tell them. 

We look at Covid deaths as if they were a bad thing. But I try to be positive; I try to look at the upside of everything, even things that seem, at first glance, to be tragedies.

A lot of people are dying from Covid, but think of the upside. There are too many cars on the highways now. If a lot of those drivers would just die of Covid, then driving on our interstate highways would be much more pleasant. It might sound terrible, but it's true! Isn't it? Think about it.

Many cities and towns are much too crowded and it's pushing up home prices. And crime. If millions of homeowners were to die of Covid, home prices would drop like a rock, plus a lot of ugly new housing subdivisions would no longer be necessary. We could enjoy Nature again. And be safer.

Fewer people would be flying and the airports would be less congested. Our demand for diminishing resources would decrease. What with global warming and the never-ending drought out West, Lake Mead would last longer before it's entirely gone. The gamblers in Las Vegas won't have to drink Diet Soda to quench their thirst. The generators at Hoover dam will continue running longer and all the lights will stay on in Vegas. When Lake Mead is finally dry, then those Las Vegans can break out the candles in the casinos. That should be something to see. 

Many anti-vaxxers get deathly ill but because of modern medicine, they recover and go home. This is unfortunate. I advise anti-vaxxers to stick to their guns. When you get sick, sit in bed and chant, "It's just a cold, it's just a cold, it will go away." Really believe it. Don't let anyone talk you into going to the hospital. They just might put you on a breathing machine and take away your God-given right to die in misery.

I've already blogged about my Covid-19 vaccinations. The first one was a piece of cake. The second one made me feel achy for a day, but after that it was all good. But that was my experience. Your experience could be much worse. So don't take a chance. Stay away from all needles. Don't even get a flu shot. As the old saying goes, "It's better to be sorry than safe."

Oh yeah, those pesky masks. Don't buy one. If you already did, then burn it. Remember, there is no such thing as Covid, and there is no point in protecting yourself from imaginary diseases.

One last thing. Thanks for being an anti-vaxxer and taking yourself (and possibly some family and friends) out of the picture. We remaining humans will be grateful for the extra space you're giving us.